


Speak Low When You Speak

by summerstorm



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Character of Color, Episode Tag, F/M, First Kiss, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-05
Updated: 2010-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeremy wanders in like clockwork, too, and he shares a look with Bonnie before taking over the kitchen. It's not a complicit look. It's distilled acknowledgment, nothing more, and Bonnie's convinced it's designed specifically to make her feel like crap. Set after 2.10.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak Low When You Speak

**Author's Note:**

> For torigates, who asked for Bonnie/Jeremy secret-dating fic. This is more like first-kiss fic, but there is secrecy involved? I hope it suffices.

Bonnie's sitting at the Gilberts' kitchen table, looking through her spell book while Elena figures out what to cook for dinner, when the doorbell rings. Elena rolls her eyes and waits for another two rings to go open the door. Bonnie smiles at her, and Elena returns the smile. It's a little contrived, because they both know who's at the door and why, and because Elena knows Bonnie wholeheartedly agrees with his reasons, but that doesn't mean they can't mock the weird routine they've gotten themselves into.

"You're still alive. Good," Damon greets Elena, in a monotone. "Mind if I stay for dinner?"

As far as Bonnie can hear, Elena doesn't say a word, but Damon walks into the kitchen a few seconds later, and she can hear the soft slam of the door when Elena closes it behind him.

Jeremy wanders in like clockwork, too, and he shares a look with Bonnie before taking over the kitchen.

It's not a complicit look. It's distilled acknowledgment, nothing more, and Bonnie's convinced it's designed specifically to make her feel like crap.

It's just, Bonnie doesn't want to make things more complicated than they already are. They're both in this bizarre network of insanity where getting hurt, where dying for each other isn't just a figure of speech, where it is an _option_ , and seeing Katherine feed on Jeremy was a wake-up call. Bonnie can't be that person. Bonnie doesn't want to be that person. If Jeremy hadn't known how hard some spells affected her, if he hadn't wanted to protect her, he wouldn't have done what he did. She wouldn't have had to see it, or fix it, or tell Elena about it.

And Elena—Elena doesn't need to be worrying about Jeremy more than she usually does. She doesn't need to worry about him taking a hit for Bonnie, and she definitely doesn't need to worry about his love life. All this time, Bonnie always thought it'd make things easier, maybe, if she could talk about _hers_ , if she had something exciting to say that didn't have to do with vampires or magic, if they could _act_ normal again. She doesn't want to lose that option. If she started dating Jeremy, even that would be weird. It would be another problem, something else they try not to talk about.

Bonnie's being reasonable, that's all. Better safe than sorry.

*

Dinner is torturously slow. Bonnie wonders several times if it hasn't occurred to Damon that he doesn't have to do this. He could just text Bonnie or ask her to keep him up to date and Bonnie would, because she's on his side on this one.

Of course, it's Damon, so he's most likely trying to make things harder for everyone, and bringing that up would just egg him on.

They're not even done eating when Elena starts asking about Stefan and Damon starts answering with things that range from, "He's busy writing poems about how sweetly he's going to kiss you when he sees you again," to, "He's locked in alone with the woman who taught him how to give head, how do you think he is?"

(Bonnie doesn't miss the way Jeremy chokes every time Damon's remarks lean towards the latter. It probably says more about her than it does about him; after all, Damon's conjuring up some images of Elena even Bonnie wishes she could erase from her mind, and Elena's not even her sister.)

"Do you need to have this conversation over dinner?" Bonnie asks tiredly after a while. She knows it's not going to change anything, except then the door opens, and Jenna and Alaric join them, and finally, _finally_ Damon and Elena shut up.

*

After dinner, they move to the living room; Alaric stays behind to clear up the kitchen, and Jenna says something about sleep deprivation and not wanting to see any blood on the carpet when she wakes up before retiring to her room.

Elena turns on the TV. Bonnie clutches her spell book and her notebooks and assumes make-sure-Damon-doesn't-hurt-anyone duty.

Jeremy sits on an armrest for a few seconds, sort of keeping an eye on things. It's funny; it's not an act, he's completely serious about it, like he could really do something if Damon went psycho. Bonnie gets the urge to protect Elena — hell, that's what she's doing herself — but she wishes Jeremy would trust his sister more than he does.

After a couple of minutes, he throws a considering look at Damon and Elena. Elena probably feels his eyes on the back of her neck; it's impossible not to. Bonnie knows that look well—better than she'd like. However, where Bonnie keeps her head down and ignores him, Elena turns her head and says, "Jeremy, stop."

Jeremy lifts his hands in surrender and wanders off to his room. From halfway to the staircase, he turns back to look at Bonnie; it seems like he might say something, but Bonnie can't help dodging his eyes before he gets the words out, and then he just shakes his head and heads off upstairs.

Five minutes after that, Elena stops looking at the screen and eyes Damon. "I'm still alive. You said so yourself. Why are you still here? Do you really think I'm going to, what, go sacrifice myself in the middle of the night? I wouldn't even know where to go," she says, and Bonnie looks really hard at her Literature notes until she zones out.

When she focuses again, Damon's saying dismissively, "He just doesn't want you to do anything rash."

"No, but that's the thing," Elena interrupts, "you can't even tell me it's not something you wouldn't do, because you would. Both of you would, and you want me to believe I _shouldn't_ because, what? Because it's better if you die for me? It's better if I just lose Stefan, and Caroline and Bonnie and everyone I love."

"—I wasn't finished," Damon says calmly. "I was going to add: and frankly, it's a huge pain in the ass to go save you every time you decide to be stupid. If you don't want people to _die for you_ , you should probably start by not putting yourself in mortal danger."

Bonnie crosses her arms over her stomach, retreating into herself and praying for the couch to swallow her.

Alaric picks that moment to come back from the kitchen. She meets his eyes; she must look as pathetic as she feels, because next thing she knows, Alaric's sitting next to her and saying, "Go. I'll keep an eye on them."

She tries not to sigh in relief too loudly. She tries not to run up the stairs. She fails on both counts.

*

She's not sure how she ends up poking her head into Jeremy's room, but he gestures her to come in, so she does.

"It's not personal," Bonnie opens with. "Why Elena doesn't want you to protect her. It's not personal. Don't take it that way."

Jeremy laughs through his nose. "Right," he says, visibly making an effort to keep his voice down. He strides across the room to close the door Bonnie left open, and turns to her again. "See, what I don't get is, you talk about plans, about sticking to the plan, but you knew you weren't strong enough, and you couldn't know what might happen to you. You don't know what a spell that big might do to you. When I went in the tomb, I knew exactly what could happen—I knew she might feed on me, I knew she might kill me, but the ring would bring me back. It was a calculated risk. If I hadn't been alone—if someone would've listened and helped me, nothing would have happened. I could get through without any spells and I had the ring. I would've been fine."

"That's not true," Bonnie says, serious. "Katherine could have—bitten off your finger or something. You're not immortal. You can't think of that ring as something that makes you immortal, because it doesn't. It's not bulletproof."

"It actually kind of is bulletproof," Jeremy says, cocking his head, a corner of his mouth curling upwards. Bonnie knows he's just trying to make light of the situation, which is completely unfair; he's already said everything he had to say, but she can't help it. She laughs. "But you're not," he whispers, just when her guard is down; when she meets his eyes, her breath catches in her throat. There's so much there it scares her. He's not supposed to feel like this about her.

"You can't," Bonnie begins. Her throat feels tight. She tries again, "You can't care about me that way."

Jeremy snorts a laugh. "That's definitely personal."

"It's not," Bonnie says softly, then, with a little more determination, "it's not. It's not that you're—" That doesn't go anywhere; she changes direction. "You're Elena's brother."

"I'm aware of that," Jeremy says, eyes crinkling in amusement. Bonnie's glad he thinks this is all so funny.

"You have enough to worry about without—" She waves her hand between them vaguely. "—this adding to it. And I don't—" _know if I can add you to my list_ , she means to say, but it feels misleading, a lie. He's already in it.

"I already care," Jeremy says, and suddenly he's trailing his fingertips along a lock of her hair, framing her face. His knuckles brush her jaw once, twice, and Bonnie feels the touch all the way to her toes. "You can't change that, Bonnie."

She's not sure when he walked right into her space, but he's right there now, close enough to feel his body heat, close enough that she has to look up to face him, close enough that he has to bend his arm so much to keep his hand near her cheek the angle of his elbow is nearing zero degrees.

She's still taking it all in when Jeremy leans in.

Bonnie takes a step back.

It takes a second for Jeremy to register the move; once he does, he blinks a few times before the blankness vanishes from his expression, before he straightens out. "I didn't mean to—" he begins, but Bonnie stops him by putting her palm over his mouth.

He stays still, eying her curiously but not making a move to get away, and she enjoys the silence for a few seconds, waiting for her heart rate to steady, waiting to process this decision, the fact that she's still here, that she hasn't run out, that she can feel his breathing on her palm.

After a while, she moves her hand away; she tries to take it back altogether, too, but it feels wrong, so she cups the side of his jaw instead, thumbing idly at his cheek.

"Bonnie," he says softly, questioning; that's all the words he gets out before she moves her thumb to his chin and brushes her lips to his.

It should be weirder, kissing him. It should at least feel weird, and the idea of it does, sometimes, when she's thought, when she thinks about it, but actually kissing him seems like the most natural thing in the world, the only natural course of action.

When she arches into Jeremy, he's not Elena's little brother. He's this _boy_ who's so tall she has to stand on her tiptoes to reach him, this boy who's cradling the back of her neck, absently lacing her hair around his fingers as he tilts her head up with a hand that feels like it's everywhere. He's someone who makes her gasp and swallows the sound, who makes her feel bizarrely optimistic and nervous all at once.

He grabs her idle hand and laces their fingers together quickly, rushed, before letting go, and then there's a large palm on her hip, and her shirt is riding up over it, and oh, god, she barely has the presence of mind to stop, to step back before the moan she feels forming in the back of her throat has a chance to come out.

His eyes search her face when she pulls back. She whispers, more mouthing than actual noise, "Vampire. Downstairs. Can hear us."

"Oh, we're—" Jeremy says, presumably realizing Bonnie doesn't want people to find out yet. "Okay, that's probably a good idea."

"Are we on the same page here?" Bonnie asks, frowning, just in case.

"Bad time to tell Elena, yes," Jeremy says, not as quietly as he should have, but. Quiet enough.

"Good." She nods, mostly to convince herself, and touches her thumb to his bottom lip, pulling it down. He looks ridiculous. Bonnie smiles. "Good," she says again.

She turns to leave, but Jeremy grabs her hand and pulls her in again.

"I thought you wanted to avoid downstairs," he says, voice a little husky.

Bonnie makes a noncommittal noise. "I was, wasn't I," she agrees, and grins right into the next kiss.

*

When she gets back downstairs, Damon's just leaving, and he throws a curious look at Bonnie.

Silently, she panics. He can't possibly know. It's not like he can hear someone kiss. Not while he was distracted arguing with Elena. Is it?

"Well," Damon says to Elena, raising his eyebrows, "thank you for a very pleasant evening. Bonnie." He nods to her, and she decides it doesn't matter if he knows. The important thing is that he doesn't blurt it out to Elena—that he doesn't make some stupid joke about it or assume Elena knows and is only pretending she doesn't.

She mouths at him, _Don't tell Elena_ , and she hopes that's enough—hopes she's not wrong to think it's an insignificant secret for him, hopes he appreciates her cooperation in keeping Elena safe enough to keep it for her.

He nods at her again, acknowledgment, and breathing suddenly feels easier. Bonnie doesn't know what this thing with Jeremy is yet, not for sure. Once she does, she wants to be the one to let Elena know.


End file.
